by Paul Teetor

Next Thursday, February 8, the Lakers will unveil a statue of the late, great Kobe Bryant in the Star Plaza, outside the venue formerly known as the Staples Center. 

Friday, January 26, was the fourth anniversary of Kobe’s sudden, shocking death in a Calabasas helicopter crash, along with seven other people, including his daughter Gianna. For sports fans it was one of those I-can-recall-exactly-where-I-was moments, news so stunning that January 26 will remain a day to be marked and remembered by sports fans and the media far, far into the future.

There are plenty of Kobe murals around Los Angeles, and for many of us it’s as if he’s still alive, still a Laker, still a presence in our daily lives. 

Kobe was a complicated, complex man, extreme in everything he did. He called it the Mamba Mentality and he was proud of it. Very few sports figures give themselves a nickname, but Kobe started calling himself the Black Mamba and it stuck.

The initial reaction to his passing – besides grief and shock — was to turn him into a saint, a basketball god who embodies all the things that made him great: unparalleled work ethic, unparallelled intensity, and unparallelled skills and athleticism.

The sainthood movement was quickly derailed by feminist voices reminding us of the Colorado rape charges that Kobe essentially bought his way out of when his accuser declined to testify, and settled for a large cash payment and a public apology from Kobe. 

Then there was the ugly legal fight with his mother Pam over her attempt to sell his childhood memorabilia. In a sworn deposition, he said his mother was lying about her claim to ownership of the items.

Technically, he didn’t sue his mother – he sued the auction house she was working with – but the prolonged legal fight with his mother was incredibly unseemly and embarrassing.

That was off the court. On the court, his long-running feud with Shaquille O’Neal was one of the great screw-ups in sports history. 

Together, they won three NBA titles in a row from 2000-2002 and established themselves as the greatest inside-outside duo in NBA history. 

They should have won at least three more. All they needed was for one of them to be the undisputed Batman and one of them to accept the role of Robin. 

But they simply could not get along, could not figure out the pecking order. Shaq thought Kobe was a selfish, me-first showboat and Kobe thought Shaq was a fat, lazy, fun-loving clown who didn’t take his profession, his talent or his training seriously enough.

They were both right, to one degree or another.

It got so bad that staff and teammates were drawn into the animosity and forced to take sides. You were either a Kobe guy or a Shaq guy.

After they lost the 2004 NBA Finals to a Detroit team they should have beaten easily, Kobe issued a him-or-me ultimatum to the Lakers and owner Jerry Buss.

The Lakers chose Kobe while Shaq was traded to Miami, and were rewarded with repeat titles in 2009 and 2010. But they came only after Kobe threatened to leave in 2007 unless the Lakers got him some help. That was also the year he had 81 points in a game against Toronto – the second-highest total in NBA history, which tells you how badly he needed more talented teammates.

That’s when they obtained Pau Gasol from Memphis – where Laker great Jerry West just happened to be the general manager — and he was the willing sidekick Kobe needed to make three straight Finals appearances and win two straight titles.

But it all fell apart in the 2011 playoffs, and it was a downhill slide – punctuated by his Achilles tendon rupture – until his final two seasons when the only reason fans turned out was to see Kobe score, putting on a show while his team was awful.

His final game – a 60-point masterpiece – was a fitting end to a turbulent career by one of the most talented, most dedicated and most controversial players in NBA history.

Regardless of how you felt about Kobe on or off the court, he richly deserves the statue going up next week.

Kobe, we’ll never forget you. 

How could we?

Chargers finally do the right thing

This time, the Chargers got their man.

This time, they got the right man.

This time, the Chargers turned their franchise around in one swift, smart move.

On Thursday, the Chargers were widely seen locally and in the National Football League as cheap and irrelevant, the penny-pinching junior varsity team to the Rams big-spending varsity team. 

Their last three head coaches were hired without any head coaching experience and thus came cheap – and all three proved to be failures, a stark case of penny-wise and pound-foolish.

But on Friday, the Chargers were widely seen as free-spending and relevant for the first time in their 7-year span in LA.

That’s how important, how significant – how historic, really – the break-the-bank hiring of Jim Harbaugh as their new Head Coach is.

Indeed, All Ball is now predicting that the Chargers will win the Super Bowl in three years, in February 2027 – which just happens to be the next time it is being played in SoFi Stadium.

SoFi, of course, was the site of the Rams Super Bowl victory in 2022, and is also the home field for both the Rams and the Chargers. The Rams, however, own it while the Chargers are merely tenants.

But still, a Chargers Super Bowl victory in SoFi would be just as gratifying – probably more gratifying – than the Rams victory was, because the Chargers have never won a Super Bowl. They were crushed by the San Francisco 49ers 49-26 in 1994 in their one and only Super Bowl appearance as the San Diego Chargers.    

Why all the crazy Chargers optimism all of a sudden?

Because Harbaugh is a magician with quarterbacks, a true quarterback whisperer. The Chargers already have the second most talented quarterback in the league in Justin Herbert, behind only Patrick Mahomes, the guy who throws the passes to Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, Kansas City Chief tight end Travis Kelce. Herbert just needs the right coach and the right offensive coordinator to become a championship winning quarterback.

All you have to do is look at Harbaugh’s record to know that he’s the right guy to get Herbert and the Chargers back in the playoffs and over the hump.

Not only did Harbaugh play quarterback in both college and the pros – he even played a couple of seasons with the Chargers at the end of his career — but when he was coaching the San Francisco 49ers he worked with Alex Smith and Colin Kaepernick, turning both of them from average quarterbacks into very good quarterbacks.

Smith’s career ended with a horrific knee injury – doctors almost had to amputate his leg – and Kaepernick’s career went sideways when he got caught up in putting his fight for social justice ahead of his standing in the league.  But for a three-year period, Harbaugh helped guide them to three straight conference championships and one Super Bowl appearance.    

Are there still plenty of problems to be solved?

Of course.

For one thing, the Chargers are well over the salary cap and will need to make some hard decisions about keeping expensive, talented-but-often-injured players like edge rusher Joey Bosa and wide receiver Mike Williams.

Equally important, they will have to hit a home run with the fifth pick in the draft, the highest pick they have had since Herbert fell into their laps in the sixth pick in the 2019 draft. If they’re smart, they’ll use it on an offensive lineman to help protect Herbert, far and away the team’s most valuable asset.

Over this past season Herbert broke two fingers, one on each hand, and the second one knocked him out for the year with six games left. The team cannot afford to have him get hurt like that again.      

Harbaugh is a quirky guy with an off-beat personality, but his track record shows two things to be true: guys love to play for him, and he is a consummate turnaround artist.

And the cupboard is not bare for the Chargers: they have two future Hall of Famers in Bosa and Kahlil Mack, elite edge rushers who both terrorize quarterbacks, and a shifty running back in Austin Ekeler who also has a knack for catching passes out of the backfield and scoring touchdowns despite his diminutive size.

And wide receivers Keenan Allen and Mike Williams are reliable pros when they aren’t hurt.

The Spanos family – owner Dean Spanos and his son John, President of Football Operations — were tired of being labeled cheapskates who weren’t willing to spend what it takes to compete for championships in the NFL. Last summer they locked up Herbert far into the future with a $262 million contract, and now they are sending a signal that they are willing to go all the way to compete in the crowded entertainment market of LA.  

With this one hire, they have at least put the Chargers curse on hold.

It says here that they will electrify the city by winning a Super Bowl in SoFi Stadium in 2027.

Then, and only then, will the Chargers curse – which followed them here from San Diego like a coastal eddy – be dead and buried.

Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com

Follow: @paulteetor